New Neilson Soundscan genre capabilities show that rock is the most popular digital download genre.
The data reporting system that records sales has added new digital song genre reports to its service.
Surprisingly enough, considering the genres that predominantly make up the singles chart, pop and R&B aren’t the most popular genres of songs that people buy online.
It turns out that rock has the highest percentage of sales with 27%, followed by songs designated as pop at 25.4% and R&B and hip-hop lumped together with 21.9% of sales.
This may well be explained by the trend for hip-hop, R&B and pop songs to be purchased individually, while rock songs are usually purchased as part of an album, bumping up to total amount of songs.
Also, rock commands 72.4% of catalogue sales, whereas rap only has 33.9% of catalogue sales as it is a more hit-driven genre.
Soundscan divides all music into 27 genres overall, which are categorised into 16 core genres for classification.
The lowest digital sales genres by percentage are Bluegrass, Broadway and New Age. The lowest genre sales of back catalogue material are Latin-Rhythm, Children, and Rap.
VIDEO: Ready to rock? Check out our interview with majestic rock unit Muse below.
